Some of those features, like the ability to track stress and blood pressure, were simply too complex to institute, or ran the risk of triggering government regulation that the company wanted to avoid. In other cases, sensor makers weren’t able to meet Apple’s standards (not an uncommon phenomenon).

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The report says that the sensors for some features performed very inconsistently, with a host of unpredictable variables—ranging from tightness of the watch band to hairiness of the wearer’s arm—could lead to incorrect readings.

With some of the most interesting features now on the chopping block, the Journal claims that Apple’s executive team was left without much of a direction for the device and wondering what would draw customers to it.

What the team eventually settled on was the product hitting store shelves in April. It doesn’t boast as many impressive health-focused features as originally planned, and attempts to fill in the gaps by offering other attractions, such as heartbeat-based messaging and communication tools. Some of the simpler health features also made it into the finished product.

The report’s sources said that while these features were cut during the development of the first-gen model for a reason, there’s a possibility they could appear in later versions.

Another Journalreport also notes that Apple is currently looking to manufacture 5-6 million units for the April launch:

Apple has asked its suppliers in Asia to make a combined five to six million units of its three Apple Watch models during the first quarter ahead of the product’s release in April, according to people familiar with the matter.

Half of the first-quarter production order is earmarked for the entry-level Apple Watch Sport model, while the mid-tied Apple Watch is expected to account for one-third of output, one of these people said.

Orders for Apple Watch Edition – the high-end model featuring 18-karat gold casing – are relatively small in the first quarter but Apple plans to start producing more than one million units per month in the second quarter, the person said. Analysts expect demand for the high-end watches to be strong in China where Apple’s sales are booming.

If the report is accurate, a 50%/33% split for the Apple Watch Sport and the Apple Watch would leaves 17% of the 5-6 million units—850,000 to just over 1 million—as gold Apple Watch Edition models. However, the Journal also repeats speculation that the gold watches could sell for $4,000 or more, which would make first-quarter sales of a million gold watches hard to achieve.

Yeah the purpose for a device like this, which is worn constantly, is biosensors. End of story. Everything else should be second to that. The reason this seems like it doesn’t have much purpose to many is due to these problems they came across. Once they can build these other sensors into it, it will become much clearer why this was made.

This WSJ article is a bogus story, written by someone who is trying to start a false rumor about the Apple Watch.

The truth is that Apple has NOT changed or removed the health features of the Apple Watch at all!

In fact, Apple’s extensive web site section on the Apple Watch, which goes into mass production soon, spends a good deal of text, images, and video highlighting the important health features.

A quote from Apple’s website:

“With a custom heart rate sensor, it’s built to know you better.
The wrist is a convenient area for collecting data about your physical activity, a task Apple Watch is designed to perform throughout the day. On the back of the case, a ceramic cover with sapphire lenses protects a specially designed sensor that uses infrared and visible-light LEDs and photodiodes to detect your heart rate. Apple Watch uses this sensor, along with an accelerometer and the GPS and Wi‑Fi in your iPhone, to measure all kinds of physical movement, from simply standing up to actively working out. This allows Apple Watch to provide a comprehensive picture of your daily activity, suggest customized goals, and reward you for reaching personal fitness milestones.”

The WSJ article is written by someone who doesn’t work at Apple, and has no real knowledge of the Apple Watch, but is just trying to plant a spurious rumor about the company.

florinnica - 3 years ago

Do you imply that you do work at Apple, and have real knowledge about the matter? If yes, I would love to hear some more.

Harvey you are confusing fitness with health tracking. What was presented in October and being shown in the website is a fitness tracker.

HealthKit was developed for information the watch would be detecting. breathing rate, oxygen levels, glucoselevels, hydration levels, sleep and many more. Apple couldn’t get the sensors to work correctly so they dumped them to get a device released and went with fitness tracking and gave up on health.

Stetson - 3 years ago

The WSJ article is talking about additional health features that Apple originally wanted to be in the Apple Watch, but that were not announced last fall or on the website.

It’s kind of weird to call them ‘cut features’ when they were never announced to begin with, but supposedly they were part of the original internal plan for the watch device.

It’s mostly interesting as a look at where Apple might go with future iterations of the device, but it isn’t really that surprising.

Agree with all the comments below – Apple Watch health tracking abilities will be limited in the first version. I was expecting Apple Watch more like a health band making Health app populated with relevant data. This kind of monitoring is impractical / impossible with iPhone. In fact health monitoring is primary differentiating feature of smart watch that validates this category. Notifications that transferred from phone to watch are mere convenience. I imagined a Watch being able to predict whether a person may be having heart attack by comparing his/her health history with current vitals, or signal if your skin is exposed to much sun, or that you are dehydrated. However, I think it is blessing in disguise that these sensors did not make it into first gen device. First, based on the battery life report, adding these sensors would have devastated the Watch making it impractical keeping these sensors on. Second, many consumers could have confused the Watch with a medical tracker – medical issues are not pleasant thought for most.

I think as technology perfects, consumers will also be more accepting of this category and won’t mind extra sensor looking after them. There is always second gen for that.

I hope this means that Apple found that they had a compelling enough product by diversifying it away from health and wanted to release it. Rather than just feeling the pressure from the media, market and competition… Usually they’re good at waiting until a product is ready. This story makes me a little concerned.

Unfortunately, it really seems like the article is telling the truth :( I love Apple, but I can not find a reason why I would want this watch. And I love watches too. I wear watches very regularly, and I really like collecting them

Mike is referring to the rumors of 10 sensors being in the watch not the 4 sensors used to read heart rate that were shown in the presentation.
Mike is refering to how the Apple Watch was intended as health device and ended up being a fitness tracker and fashion device.

o0smoothies0o - 3 years ago

While I don’t think it will have any of these sensors yet, I don’t think just because they weren’t announced at the first keynote, that obviously means they aren’t they wouldn’t be there. They could have been working on FDA approval in the interim, and announcing a couple more sensors like some suggested in this article would send the device into an absolute media frenzy and they would be astounding surprises. Every single doctor would appeal to their patients to get one, and that’s not because they’re being paid to say so, it’s becauae they realize that it can change the world.

By the sounds of it nothings changed since the watch was first announced. Those sensors it was originally going to include are still there….anything else was just, and remains, speculation.

In any event, while people in the health industry might see the news in this article as a disappointment, for I imagine a greater number of users its probably a non issue. Having health data for many users is a nice to have, but is probably secondary to being able to run applications and carry out other interactions on the device.

o0smoothies0o - 3 years ago

Health is #1. Frankly if it could track the things it suggests in this article it would change the world. As of now, it’s good, not world changing. If it could track blood glucose non-invasively, it could save millions of lives, and over time, billions, not to mention reversing the obesity epidemic. People ignorant to the subject don’t understand the importance of knowing blood glucose. It isn’t just good for diabetics. It’s good for every living human on the planet, as every single person needs to control, and be told that these are vitally important, and they should not be spiking these levels greatly as it can lead to weight gain, and obesity, let alone the numerous associated diseases, like diabetes, and by the way number of pre-diabetics would really scare you.

I don’t know how they can measure blood pressure without having one of those cuff systems you put around your bicepts which is clearly not something they can do in an actual watch. Apple sells a blood pressure system that sends info the iPhone, so that’s how they handle blood pressure now, plus they have that scale that connects to iDevices, etc. So HealthKit does gather additional information from these other 3rd party sensors/scales, etc.

Apple has been hiring medical biosensor engineers and some of them have been working on various stick on sensors, so it’s conceivable that maybe the additional sensors to measure things won’t be actually built into the watch, but added externally as a stick on the wrist or arm sensor.

We’ll obviously see what happens over time, but I’m just wondering when Apple plans on releasing the 2nd gen product and how much better it’s going to be and at what cost?

I know Apple will probably sell a bunch of these AppleWatches, but I’m sure they’ll sell more of the 2nd gen model, but how many years is it going to be between releases? yearly? every two years? etc.? I don’t know how many people are going to want to spend that kind of money on a new watch every year.

Could be “one more thing…” at the launch. But I really do not think all these sensors are needed for successful launch of the first gen wearable. For most consumers even the included fitness/health features will be novel. It is important to realize fitness tracking is a really niche market. I believe with its marketing might, Apple can bring fitness tracking to masses truly changing how we think about it. After all fitness leads to better health.

If you don’t have an interest in what happened during the development of a product widely being hailed as Apple’s next big thing, that’s fine. But I’m sure plenty of people would like to know why those 10 sensors we were hearing about months back didn’t end up shipping.

rogifan is correct. It’s one thing to “report” a rumor, but it’s totally unreasonable to criticize Apple for not delivering on the rumor. 9to5 is usually good about acknowledging the fact that any rumored feature may not make it into a product by any specified time. How many years did rumors of a larger iPhone float before Apple finally decided to release the 6 series?

The health aspect is certainly an important part of the Watch, but hardly the only one. Each person will have her/his own priorities as to what’s important in the Watch. Some things (payments, discreet notifications/alarms, etc.) we already know about, others will have to wait for apps to be announced.

It’s utter nonsense to claim that Apple “struggled to find a purpose” for the Watch. I think they have a very clear idea of where they want to take this product. As in all of their products, they are looking years ahead. There was no chance they would be able to accomplish all their goals in the first iteration. They also acknowledge that app developers will play an important part in advancing the product to new and unexpected places.

You are absolutely right. Think about the people who hasn’t heard of any of these rumors, as in normal case. Nothing will change for them because nothing was planned to be changed for the first version of it. Even if Apple succeeded to include those sensors, there would be no way to complete all the regulatory stuff for those new features in just a couple of months, especially the FDA related ones. They were already planned to be included for upcoming versions.

What? This is one of the most interesting articles in a while. It’s literally describing what their vision was, and what the device should be, but isn’t. It’s good, not world changing. I’m getting one, I just wanted what they envisioned, and I know they’ll continue trying, hence why they hired all of those health related researchers.

The article is double sided on if they will continue with the health sensor Kaiden version. It says Apple saw it as a black hole and abandoned it. On the other hand mention the health hires your mentioned.

Hopefully the revolutionary device gets made and not just the fitness tracker presented in October.

Apple went wrong not seeking FDA approval for true health tracking. A fitness tracker isn’t anything new or compelling enough for me to buy a first generation model.

Tracking glucose levels, stress, blood pressure and other vitals would been very compelling to many people who want an active roll in their health. It would let doctors and hospitals more closely monitor their patients health.

I’m sure one day Apple will release a health oriented device and think they should have waited to release the first generation device until they could reliabl make the device.

Doodling hearts and sharing heartbeats are lame and the basic fitness tracking is a moor disappointment.

Gee I guess Apple should never have released the first iPhone because it didn’t have 3G, didn’t have 3rd party apps, no copy/paste and launched on one carrier. If everyone waited until they could release a perfect product nothing would ever be released.

Well the iPhone started out as the iPad and you are missing my point. Apple has left it open season for any other company to release a true health tracking watch or band. Apple enters Markets to redefine them and make their own not to just join the crowd.

Seriously 5 minutes of showing doodling and sharing heartbeats shows Apple totally had no clue what it wanted to do with this after they pulled the health sensors.

Now they we clearly focussing on fashion. Deciding rather to lit carpet by the Watch displays in Apple Stores.

Apple could changed the health care industry and is now placing safes in stores and remodeling displays to sell a fashion accessory.

Apple could done this with a new nano, not watch with 4 sensors. Sometimes devices needs years of tinkering before release like the iPad. The Apple Watch as shown off in October was a let down and also clear Apple was unsure what to do with it. Gone are the tent pole features of past devices used as selling points.

The biggest sign Apple is lost on the Apple Watch is HealthKit. It has built in software for stress, sleeping, glucose, oxygen levels and many other health features Apple wanted. Apple should slowt on the device until the batteries and sensors were right. Sounds like recharging through a half a day of use is another sign things are not ready.

Jawbone up 3 doesn’t track anything other than heart beats and movement (so not even close to what they wanted the Apple Watch to do), but I am sure the tightness of the jawbone band plays a role in measuring your HR. If it is too loose, it won’t be able to read it accurately.

Almost all fitness bands (including Jawbone, etc.), when tested against lab based machines that accurately record caloric intake have failed by between 10 and 20 percent as far as I recall. I don’t remember the standings of particular devices, but I think Jawbone was one of the better ones.

Even so, so far, the measurements these devices take should be considered “close” but not necessarily exact.

It will be interesting to see what Apple’s result is when tested after it’s release. I would bet it’s probably the most accurate of them all, for the sensors that it includes.

Well, imagine that! The first-ever product of someone may be not as good as everyone is expecting? Imagine that – iPhone 1st gen? iPad Mini 1st gen? Of course they’ll struggle to convince millions of people to buy it immediately. But hold on, the 2nd gen is already in R&D in Cupertino. And you can bet it will be at least x5 better than the first one. Compare iPad Minis if you like. Compare first gens Tesla cars and the last, gorgeous one. :) So yeah, probably couple of (hundreds) millions people won’t buy it now. But 2nd gen will be massive success. And probably people who are saying now “no, not for me”, will be saying “ordered mine” in next 14-16 months. :)

I’ve been saying since Apple previewed the Apple Watch I would not buy a first generation and would buy and a 2nd generation or one With FDA approval. The lack of health tracking Mars it a no go for me. I still say Apple should delayed the release until they had the medical sensors ready for prime time.

A fashion statement with simple fitness tracking is not for me and is not a groundbreaking product. Yes it will sell millions. But it is t a game changer, it leaves room for other companies to come in a make a true health tracker. Sensing glucose, blood pressure, sleep, oxygen levels and all on a wrist worn device would been groundbreaking. There were rumors insurance and health companies were going to supply the watches to members for constantly wearing it.

Prevents in this report it says Appe saw a health ordinated watch as a black hole and scapped it and yet says the features and sensors could arrive in a later model. I think Apple totally fucked up on this one. instead of focusing on self driving autonomous electric vehicles focussing on device that help people truly track their help would save life’s and hundreds of millions of dollars on medical expenses. Steve Jobs died of a disease that wrecked his nor ones, glucose and many other vitals that could be tracked by an Apple Watch. Apple engineers owe that to Steve Jobs and millions of people with diseases that need or should be constantly monitored.

o0smoothies0o - 3 years ago

I agree with you on some things, like I believe biosensors are the entire purpose of a product that is constantly worn like this. It is the only thing that can change the world, and that’s not at all an exaggeration. However, no company is going to do this before Apple, and if they did, they wouldn’t be accurate enough to pass FDA standards. I just hope Apple can add dozens of accurate sensors in the years to come.

Well, I still cannot agree with you on that one. If you compare Mini to Mini 2, you’ll see quite a difference. Or at least I see (and of course the big sell out being the better screen/retina). But I am totally with you on the last part – Mini 3 is really embarrassing. I guess the 4 will have quite a leap and will feature some truly interesting things. Or at least will be updated to the top, like Air 2. We’ll see. :)

Hmm…this headline doesn’t seem to support the story. I find it highly unlikely that Apple was planning a fitness only device and we end up with a general purpose device instead. What’s more likely is they were very ambitious with the sensors they wanted to include and had to scale back for a number of reasons.

No. What Apple wanted was basically a medical device that reported to your phone your vitals. look at HealthKit and the Health App and you can see what Apple wanted to track with a set of de sore for their watch.

Heart rate and logging how much you move during a day is fitness. Tracking blood pressure, glucose, oxygen levels, breathing rate and body temperature is health tracking.

One is logging physical,activity the other is logging vitals and overall health.

No. Apple wanted to change the world. Highly accurate biosensors would change the world. In its current state, it simply doesn’t change the world. I fully believe their purpose was as the article suggests, although it could have evolved into what it is now in the other aspects, over time. I hope they can add more sensors, and make it a revolutionary device.

Apple Watch 3 or Apple Watch 4 in a 2-3 years will probably have all the sensors working as planned.
Just like the first iPhone didn’t have many features and the 3GS had almost all the features planned.

o0smoothies0o - 3 years ago

I hope so, the article is just off-putting because of the descriptions on why they didn’t work, such as arm hair, and device tightness on wrist. However, I view device tightness as a non-issue. Anyone should know that in order for biosensors to work accurately, it needs to be not falling up and down your wrist, I mean…seriously? It’s a choice the wearer gets to make, do you want the device to track these things, or not? If so, tighten it up so it doesn’t flop up and down your wrist….

I just wonder how much the development changed after they met with the FDA. Werre the sensors to unreliable for Apple or just not reliable enough for FDA approval. I still ponder the 4 sensors in the watch can do more then tack hert rate. Just Apple has it turned off.

Apple is not going to release a product with health sensors that aren’t as accurate as they can get them. And anything that gets to the point of offering medical advice requires FDA approval. It would be silly for Apple to not release this product because of that. They would be giving the competition a huge leg up in terms of developer support and apps.

Some government regulation is vital important. In this day and age when companies can create drugs which could kill you if they aren’t tested and proven to be safe (as best as can be assessed from the amount of testing done), that could be catastrophic. If companies can throw out inaccurate biosensors especially blood glucose monitoring, it could kill a lot of people. So it’s necessary, and I’d be so much happier to see an FDA approved Watch with crazy sensirs than one which isn’t.

” … how did we, as lowly stupid peasants, survive before government regulation?”

Mostly, we didn’t. Only a complete ultra-conservative, paranoid fool (or a Libertarian – same thing), is against government regulation.

aaronh - 3 years ago

Or, you know, anyone that has a terrible disease and would like to use drugs that are widely available and taken successfully all over the world but STILL haven’t been approved by the FDA despite the literal hundreds of millions of dollars and years spent doing so.

I thought the same since the preview, that Apple might be waiting for FDA approval or just trying to get the data more reliable and fine tuning the sensors. I don’t see Apple spending so much money on those 4 sensors for just heart rate when a simple sensor can do the same.

I still hope Apple releases a FDA approved version later this year with more sensors. I know I won’t buy one until health tracking is a min feature and not fitness and activity. Minus heart rate any current IPhone can do the activity and fitness tracking.

I’d say it will be by far the most accurate heartrate sensor of any wrist-worn device, ever, and for years into the future. The interesting thing to think about concerning when an FDA approved watch is released, is that it’s not just hardware that has to be capable, it’s also software. To me, you almost have to keep the software aspects away from everything else so they wouldn’t get any bugs (granted I know nothing about software and bugs). The software has to be 100% bug free, and remain that way, because if you had a bug, it could cost people their lives in extreme cases.

That’s the entire purpose of HealthKit and if I remember earlier from what the FDA said that software doesn’t have to meet FDA approval just hardware. If software had to meet standards then all devices with the iOS Health app would have to meet approval.

aaronh - 3 years ago

FDA has changed that stance and is now concerned very much about software and have stated as much. Their concerns are that people are too dumb and will misinterpret the data. (This is the same BS reason there are always rumblings and threat of regulation that people shouldn’t be able to use something like 23 And Me for genetic testing).

I thought the same, but those four sensors are actually just two. Two are sensors, and two create the light pulses that are sensed by the sensors. At least that’s my understanding of it. Even if they have to add new sensors though, possibly the big Zirconia crystal will screw out and be replaceable like the back of any old-school watch? Maybe?

Makes me wonder what kind of other sensors there could be though. This article and others like it this morning picking up the same story, are fairly vague as to what kind of other sensors there are out there.

Respiratory sensors are out because you can’t get that from a wrist. Blood sugar would be a popular one although I don’t eat sugar so I wouldn’t care. Blood pressure would be a good one. Beyond that?

I know it’s kind of a lame product, but it is just the 1.0 version and I still want one.

5 million seems low to me when everyone is predicting 20-25 million sales. I think there will be great demand as usual and that supplies will be limited. They will be hard to come by until at least mid-summer, possibly fall.

You think it’s lame but you want one? Is it you or the product that’s lame? I personally think the product is an incredible 1.0 technology and fashion item from a non-fashion company. According to New Yorker’s profile piece on Ive was eager to produce the as a range of options that heavily favoured fashion and respected watch heritage but he received a lot of push back at Apple to this but won out in the end. The watch itself if it merely told the time comes in a beautiful range of colours, materials and options and price ranges that will prove compelling. It’ll be a great gift, has an awesome set of features and will add more over time via 3rd party apps and new hardware versions.

Myself I won’t get one because I just don’t like to have anything on my wrist, but there a lot of people who’d like one.

Evidence for lameness? … How about those silly “drawings on the wrist?” How about the sending your heartbeat thing? How about the super-ugly, super-tasteless “giant” emojis?

Those emojis are some seriously tacky shit. I was embarrassed for Apple when I saw them.
Totally cringeworthy.

I find it kind of interesting that we find out now, (this article) that these things were probably added only because the health features were dropped. It kind of fits to me. I couldn’t figure out why they had them at first, and now I know.

Does sensors feel like gimmicks EKG! Blood pressure lol. THose are medical sensors not fitness. Nothing has change since announcement day. They give you 15 minutes of demo what can you use it for . And they didn’t show fitness demo. EKG LOL AGAIN

If you think Watch having blood pressure, blood sugar or hydration sensors that worked 100% of the time would be a gimmick you’re wrong. Health is important and health sensors will be huge and common place within the next 20 years. They’re just not ready for prime time at this point. But that’s OK. Not dissing gen 1 at all. It’s a great product.

I think they’ve nailed the basics solidly: 1) It can discreetly help you manage notifications, rather than be another distraction. 2) It’s customizable, fashionable, and shockingly normal-looking. 3) The UI and app design respects the small space and short bursts of usage appropriate for a wrist-borne device. 4) Their retail re-jiggering is foggy at this point, but they at least realize you can’t just throw these up on a shelf and expect them to sell.

^This is light-years ahead of anything else out there. The fact that medical sensors aren’t advanced enough hardly means they’re struggling. It’s the equivalent of no 3G or no cameras on the first gen iPhone and iPads.

I completely agree with what you’ve said I just think that their change in direction indicates how tough this area is and shows that even huge names in the industry are struggling to understand wearable techs purpose. As you’ve said, it is only the first generation and I know we will see big things from this industry and I look forward to seeing which direction it will go in so that it can be fully integrating in to our day to day lives much like the smart phone is.

So the first device will only have basic heart rate monitoring – like a number of current fitness bands and smartwatches etc – plus notifications et al yet will still need charging up every night? A number of the android wear watches with similar features seem to last a couple of days so what’s drawing all the power? Kind of a bit disappointed but I guess the “never buy a first generation apple product” rule is in effect here (having bought first gen iphone and ipad when they first came out and got rather envious when the much enhanced 2nd gen devices appear….).

Okay, so Beastley is reporting on WSJ’s reporting, which is behind a paywall. It’s hard to tell what exactly the article says about which sensors were dropped and when, but if I remember correctly, a lot of the early reporting said that the Apple Watch SoC would have a lot of sensors embedded, and then at the Keynote, the only sensors they mentioned for health were heart rate and gyro-based pedometer. I can’t really believe that Apple would drop those few they demoed in the months since the Keynote. More likely, the multitude of sensors were dropped before the Keynote. Again, hard to tell since the original article is behind a paywall.

There is an altimeter as well isn’t there? In other words, it has the ability to track all your daily physical activities as well as monitor your heart at the same time. Seems good to me.

I also wish I could read the actual article as I think many comments above about “10 sensors” or whatever being included are completely incorrect, but it’s hard to argue without facts. People are going nuts about the “lack of sensors” but what the heck else is there anyway? I don’t know of any sensor that can live on your wrist currently that they didn’t include. Blood pressure requires a cuff currently. Glucose requires blood currently. No other company out there has a band that can do either. What am I missing?

I know that the argument that “health kit measures more things than there are sensors on the watch, therefore sensors have been removed” is obviously bogus. I don’t remember Cook saying anything about any sensors on stage that have now been removed.

I’m thinking the whole story is bogus and people are freaking out about nothing.

As far as I know the lenses: “on the back of the case, a ceramic cover with sapphire lenses protects a specially designed sensor that uses infrared and visible-light LEDs and photodiodes” are of the same kind that major companys and researchers are aiming for, when it comes to measurement of blood sugars and the like… So maybe Apple came before the major companys of this?

I like the Apple Watch very much. I would like to buy one. I live in Germany. I would like to know, if the Apple Watch will be released to Germany as well with the USA in April? I don;t like to wait so long, to buy the Apple Watch. I look forward to your answer. Many regards Bernhard Prawer